Tag: Electric

In terms of maps and location services, we all have it pretty good, with the ability to find ourselves as long as there's a mobile signal. But less mapped areas such as South East Asia, don't have such easy access…

What do you do when you stop engineering sports cars for McLaren? You turn your hand to revolutionising the humble bicycle, that's what! Anna from Tech Digest sister-site Shiny Shiny had a chat with Richard Thorpe, creator of the…

Scalextric phoned me earlier. If you were a child of a certain part of the late 80s and early 90s, then you’ll immediately be envious. In actual fact, though, all that happened was that my inner eight-year-old immediately took the fore and started babbling excitedly. It was quite embarrassing. All they were trying to tell me is that Scalextric has entered the world of social media.

The company has launched a Facebook application, a YouTube channel and a blog. That wouldn’t normally be terribly exciting news, but the app and the channel seem pretty cool. The Facebook app lets you build a garage of cars that you can send to other people using the app. A few people will also win real-life Scalextric vouchers, so you can fill your real-life garage up with that instead.

The YouTube channel is also pretty awesome. There’s video of Jensen Button playing with the diminutive cars, but also guides on how to replace the contacts under the cars if they get worn, and footage of an attempt at the world record for biggest Scalextric track.

Lastly, the blog. It’s a little clunky, but there’s sections for news about the toys and space for news about motorsports. There’s also a ‘coming soon’ section for technical help on Scalextric builds, which I’m sure will come in handy.

The only thing missing in this list is a Twitter account. What’s that all about, Scalextric? I want to message @scalextric and not have some bloke from Warwickshire reply.

Military developer Northrop Grumman has a dream. A dream to create proper rayguns. A dream we would happily fund by paying extra tax and posting it off to the American government should it be able to pull it off.

But that’s not necessary – it has already done it. Northrop will soon start testing a 100 kilowatt model of its Joint High Power Solid State Laser, which chains together eight smaller 15kW models. It has already successfully tested a chain of two…

This is rather shocking, I never thought I’d be writing these words, but unfortunately the time has come for me to spell out on the keyboard that uh-oh-someone-is-suing-Microsoft-for-receiving-Zune-related-ear-damage.

I can barely look at those words 🙁

Joel Geddis was a Zune fan, and bought one of the first generation models. However, in November 2006, he “received an electric…

About 20 years ago you could buy small paper packets of hazardous chemicals, which, when shaken vigorously, would start up a chemical reaction and stay hot for a few hours. Then you threw it in the bin. It was a Christmas morning novelty.

How technology has improved! Battery maker par excellence Eneloop (a part of Sanyo) has revealed its rechargeable pocket heater, a fashionable little…